MIT Says Natural Gas Best To Lower Carbon Emissions

eldavojohn writes "This week MIT released a comprehensive, hundred-page report entitled 'The Future of Natural Gas' that outlined the many scenarios the United States faces when aiming to reduce carbon emissions. From the New York Times recap: 'The scenario goes like this, according to MIT: Nuclear power, renewable energy, and carbon capture and sequestration are relatively expensive next to gas. Conventional coal is no longer a major source of power generation in the United States. "Natural gas is the substantial winner in the electric sector: The substitution effect, mainly gas generation for coal generation, outweighs the demand reduction effect."' Will this urging help to produce a policy shift from renewable energy (like wind) to natural gas for the United States?"

Comments

Re:Natural gas - dependent upon fuel cost?

[Overzeetop]

We need multiple sources. I like solar from a purist standpoint: it's the primary source for all energy on earth save geothermal and nuclear (though it could technically be responsible for those, we'll ignore that). Still, I think solar conversion to electricity is still a long way from long term commerical viability. (yes, it's been done, but I don't see anybody making a killing in solar farms, despite the energy source being free)

Nuclear has the advantage of being cheap (at least, according to my electric bill, it's less than half the cost of coal per kWh)
Solar has the advantage of being great for A/C induced peaking loads
NG is very good for peaking loads which are not concurrent with solar generation

Of course hydroelectric is great for peaking, too - especially if practiced like France and Switzerland. The Swiss buy power from the French (nuclear) during off-peak and use it to pump water into dammed lakes, then generate power through those dams during peak periods and sell it back to the French. The challenege is that there are only so many areas which can be powered this way do to the need for proper topography.

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